Portuguese director Miguel Gomes won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in France for his film “The Grand Tour”, it was announced this Saturday at the closing ceremony.
Miguel Gomez was recognized for the first time in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival.
Miguel Gomes received the award from German director Wim Wenders and in a short speech thanked Portuguese cinema, highlighting how rare it is for Portuguese films to enter the official competition and expressed gratitude to the “great directors” such as Manoel de Oliveira who inspired the films he makes.
18 years ago, in 2006, the film “Youth in March” by Pedro Costa took part in the feature film competition.
The Grand Tour follows an early 20th century romance with Edward (Gonzalo Waddington), a civil servant of the British Empire who runs away from his fiancée Molly (Christa Alfayate) on the day she arrives for her wedding.
“Contemplating the emptiness of his existence, cowardly Edward wonders what happened to Molly… Defied by Edward’s impulses and determined to marry him, Molly follows the trail of her escaping fiancé on this ‘Great Asian Tour,'” the synopsis reads.
At a press conference in Cannes this week, Miguel Gomez, 52, explained that “The Grand Tour” is a film “about the determination of women and the cowardice of men” and also has a travel book as its reference point. A Gentleman from Asia, Somerset Maugham.
In preparing this film, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Miguel Gomez compiled an archive of travels in Asia – for example, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Vietnam, Thailand, Japan – to trace the journeys of the characters, collecting images and modern sounds for the 1918 feature film.
It was only after this tour that Miguel Gomez filmed scenes with the actors in a studio in Rome. The script was signed by the director together with Mariana Ricardo, Telmo Churro and Maureen Fazendeiro.
“What’s interesting about cinema is that you can travel to an alternative world, a fictional world that contains all times: memories of the past, the present time we live in, the present,” Miguel Gomez said on the same press conference. .
“The Grand Tour” was produced by Uma Pedra no Zapato and Filipa Reis in collaboration with Italy, France, Germany, China and Japan.
Miguel Gomes was previously in Cannes for the Filmmakers Fortnight festival, where he presented This Dear Month of August (2008), One Thousand and One Nights (2015) and The Otsogi Diaries (2021), co-directed with Maureen. Fazendeiro.
Miguel Gomez has won several awards at international festivals, including the Critics’ Prize at the Berlin Film Festival for the film Taboo (2012), the Best Director Award (shared with Maureen Fazendeiro) at the Mar del Plata Film Festival (Argentina) for the film Diarios de Otsoga” (2021) and a special jury prize in Guadalajara (Mexico) with “This dear month of August” (2009).
The 77th Cannes Film Festival began on the 14th and ends this Saturday.